Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War

Abstract

Abstract : This is the first in a new Special Series of monographs that stems from the February 2001 and the March 2002 conferences co-sponsored by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center of the University of Miami that dealt with the Implementation of Plan Colombia. This similar but different series begins a transition of focus from Colombia's specific crises to broader regional and global security concerns, and the upcoming conference in March 2003 entitled Shaping the Regional Security Environment in Latin America. Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War, written by Dr. Richard L. Millett, is the lead monograph for the new series. This timely monograph provides a careful examination of the problems generated by Colombia's three simultaneous wars against illegal drug traffickers, insurgents, and self-appointed paramilitary groups. All seek, in one way or another, violently to change or depose the state. All use the uncontrolled gray areas in Colombia and its neighboring states to sustain, conduct, and replenish their nefarious operations without risk of significant interference. And, all these violent illegal entities constitute threats to stability and security that extend beyond Colombia and Latin America to Europe and the United States. Colombia is therefore a paradigm of the failing state that has enormous implications for U.S. foreign policy and military asset management for now and into the future.